There it was. In my mailbox. Hiding behind my monthly ConEdison bill.
I quickly closed my mailbox and locked it, leaving both envelopes inside.
This was something I wasn’t prepared to deal with.
I returned home several hours later, opened the mailbox and it was still there. I grabbed the two pieces of mail and dropped them face down on the dining room table. I still wasn’t ready to deal with it.
Finally, this morning I opened the white envelope with red lettering.
AARP
CARD ENCLOSED.
Please do not bend.
Bend, I wanted to scream?! How about please do not cut?
I was barely 46 years old and already the AARP was aware of me. Is it not enough that the saggy breasts I look at each time I walk past my full length mirror are not a frequent reminder that I’m aging? Have I not noticed more gray upstairs and downstairs? Or the fine creases around my eyes when I smile? If I had a butt I guess it wouldn’t be as firm but finally I’m glad I never had one.
While sipping a hot chocolate today at Fred’s, I confessed to Lisa and Lori, “I got a letter from the AARP yesterday with a membership card.”
Lisa, always looking for the silver lining, said it was probably just because I subscribed to Good Housekeeping or some other magazine.
I gently told her that I don’t have any new magazine subscriptions, and I don’t subscribe to Good Housekeeping.
Well, she said, remember Samantha on “Sex and the City” received a card when she was 43. But then she wondered aloud how come she was using that show, as much as all three of us love it, as reality. It certainly wasn’t reality for our trio.
None of us didn’t think the card was sent until you were 50 or 55. I know its magazine has become hipper over the years, and I even used to buy it on occasion in hopes of freelancing for it, to no avail.
That must be it! Lisa said. You bought the magazine.
Bless her heart for trying to come up with a logical reason but buying a magazine at Barnes and Noble doesn’t put one on AARP’s radar.
The fact is, I am getting older. But has none of my other friends who are a few months or a year older than me received “the card?” None has mentioned it to me. This is the kind of devastating news you don’t keep secret from friends.
Now that I’ve got “the card” — at least my temporary one until I pay my one-year membership dues of $12.50 — I guess next I’ll go through “the change.”
